Home where child shot was hit more than a dozen times

DONALDSONVILLE - Sheriff's deputies said they believe someone else was the target in a drive-by shooting overnight which sent a 9-year-old Donaldsonville boy to the hospital.

Investigators were out Wednesday morning on St. Patrick Street, checking the sizes of the bullet holes in the side of the family's mobile home which was shot 13 times.

One of the bullets hit the boy in the thigh while he was sleeping in a room toward the front of the trailer, closest to the road. The three other people in the home were not hurt, according to deputies.

Investigators said they don't believe this was a random act of violence, specifically because of just how many shots were fired.

"In this day and age, when there's guns and stupid violent people that give no value to life, unfortunately innocent victims and sometimes beautiful kids get in a crossfire," Ascension Parish Sheriff Jeff Wiley told News 2.

Liquincy Tyler lives near the site of the shooting. She moved there from New Orleans four years ago specifically to get away from this kind of violence.

"I figured we could move to Donaldsonville since its slower, you know, and I'd be more at ease with my kids coming up in a less-violent environment, said neighbor Liquincy Tyler. "Now, gradually it looks like every time you turn around somebody is getting shot."

Sheriff's deputies have investigated a series of shootings since January in the usually-quiet Ascension Parish community. Three shootings happened in the span of two weeks at the end of January, including an incident where a deputy was shot after pulling over a vehicle in connection with a theft investigation.

Neighbors told News 2 this isn't the first time gun shots have hit this home. They said the home was also targeted during a shooting last year, but investigators could not confirm that Wednesday evening.

Deputies said they've still looking into the motive of the shooting.

"We don't need anymore empirical evidence that that is a hotbed of crime, and usually we also support the notion that a lot of it either drug-related directly or indirectly where somebody is paying somebody back for something somebody did," Wiley.